I’d only been in Austin a couple of weeks. I am still getting to know everything. If I am not mistaken it was the very first time I went to get McDonald’s for dinner all by myself. I didn’t know the meal deal. Come to think of it I don’t think I knew that McDonald’s came without fries or a drink. In any case, I did not have enough cash on me to get the meal and was deciding which to NOT get – the drink or the fries. The man behind me, very politely, told me to go ahead and get the meal. He covered the $0.40 or so that I was short.

A more recent event – as recent as Thanks Giving 2014. I was at Whole Foods picking one last item – which turned into a “couple of items” by the time I got the front counter 😦 Since I was planning to get just one item, I of course didn’t have a cart with me. A woman was right behind me and she only had a single item (I forget what it was). I let her get ahead of me while I was fumbling my stuff. To busy / distracted with all my stuff I didn’t notice that she paid for her and mine and had left before the girl at the counter was able to let me know that my things were already paid for. It was close to $30 worth of different cheese, pasta etc.

I did thank the man at the McDonald’s but never got a chance to thank the woman at the Whole Foods. I have thought of both of them many times since and have thanked them for their kindness. They are but just a couple of examples of the millions of very kind people we are all surrounded by.

BTW, this article would be grossly incomplete if I do not mention our neighbour the police officer who came to our door on September 11th and gave us his card with his cell phone and pager number and told us to call him if we ran into anything. We never had to, but the gesture is something that will stay with me for ever.

– manzoor

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P.S. I was checking out of H-E-B this morning and saw the latest Reader’s Digest that made me write this today. To be fair, I have been meaning to write this for a very long time.